Social Media

For Family and Finance, Try Famundo and Fygo

Two (supposedly) helpful web services are generating some buzz today: Fygo and Famundo. The former helps you to borrow money from a network of friends, while the latter is all about keeping your family organized.

Fygo - LinkedIn for Loans

Fygo actually launched in November, although the initial launch didn't receive a great deal of coverage. The Phoenix, Arizona-based company is focused on peer-to-peer money lending - a model pioneered by UK startup Zopa and US rival Prosper. A similar site, Kiva, has received praise for its unique model: the service lets you loan money to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Once you're signed up with Fygo, you can start building a network of friends and family, view loan requests and offers and post your own requests. If someone in your network makes a request that interests you, you can negotiate the interest rate and set the repayment period. This is a smart model because it allows people to lend and borrow with those they trust, and avoids the high interest rates that banks usually charge. Everyone pays $3 to verify their accounts, while borrowers pay a 2% fee to Fygo for every loan plus $1 on every repayment. The site doesn't have a great deal of activity at the moment, so the jury is out on whether it will be a success. Personally, I think the biggest issue for all these sites is trust: do you trust your friends to pay you back, and do you trust Fygo to sort out the mess when they don't?

Famundo - Basecamp for Families

Famundo, a more established site, provides tools for keeping families organized. The central feature is an online calendar, but it also includes an address book, a message board, a to-do list and a "family library" for your files. There are also versions of the site for schools and churches. The interface, meanwhile, is attractive and well-designed.

But there's one major drawback: Famundo is only free for two months, after which it costs $10 per month. That's a lot for 1GB of storage, especially when similar services like Cingo offer better features for free. The other problem these services face is that they're siloed - unlike most of the social sites featured on Mashable, they can't grow virally. The creators could combat that problem by allowing users to invite other families, but it's still a challenge to build a large user base.

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